When we last left class on Tuesday afternoon, I very much felt that Maine’s mid-coastal islands were sheltered from the rest of the state and existed outside of Harvey’s “time-space compression”; that it was a place that embodied placelessness. However upon reading Acheson’s The Lobster Gangs of Maine, I started to see another side to it. The mid-coastal islands are similar to the fishermen who share their waters from the Gulf of Maine. Acheson describes the stereotype of the Maine lobster fisherman as “the last of the rugged individualists” and as “quintessential(ly) American” (Acheson, 2). He goes on to state how the some of these stereotypes are true, but that the lobstermen also work together in communal groups in order to survive and succeed; and how these communities of fishermen are “tied to he state, the region, and the nation” (Acheson, 2). I see the islands in a similar way as the fishermen. The islands are too inextricably tied not only to each other but also to region and beyond. The evolution in lobstering, and the laws surrounding the business are a example of how the land affects the people and the people affect the land. But it is more than just the fisheries that are apart of this system.
Just like the fishermen, the islands seem to be more singular, at least in their very geography -a single mass of land surrounded by water on all sides. But together they make up a system of islands that are used by tourists, locals, and everyone in-between. While it cannot be determined how valid the stereotype of the Maine fisherman as one of a “rugged individualist”, it is that very idea that sends so many to the island. Tourists come from near and far to coastal Maine to experience or at least to witness what they believe to “quintessential(ly) American”. Mid-Maine’s coastal islands are apart of this experience. As the tourist arrive at the islands, they bring the outside world with them and when they leave they take a bit of place with them.